Data Empowerment Discussion

For many organizations, data is the heart of the business. And data intelligence is the key differentiator because it serves as the central brain for ongoing and often radical transformation. And while data is the priority, several ongoing challenges prevent organizations from achieving their data-centric goals. There's too much data. It's too distributed. It's hard to manage. There's skills gaps virtually everywhere. And all of it's leading to higher costs, higher risks, and what feels like an insurmountable burden. So how can organizations reliably expose more people to more data while ensuring uptime and reducing risk? Simply put, they can't. Not unless they figure out a way to free the experts from the data burdens and empower more employees to access and analyze data with confidence. I'm Mike Leone, senior analyst with ESG, and I lead coverage of data platforms, analytics, and AI. And today, I'm joined by Heath Thompson, president and general manager of Quest data empowerment solutions group. So Heath, before we get started, tell us a little about Quest Software. Sure, Mike. Well, Quest Software is a company that is about $1 billion in size. We help our customers with a number of different problems, everything from all things related to data to security concerns through our One Identity and Access Management portfolio and the migration to the cloud with our platform management business that's focused heavily on the Microsoft platform. Some of the brands that make up Quest include Toad, erwin, KACE, One Identity, as I said before, Quest On Demand, Metalogix, a lot of well-known brands that have served the Global 2000 and businesses really across the segments for decades. So I know we're going to talk data empowerment today. How do you define data empowerment? If you look at what's happening today in organizations, they're really reinventing themselves really with data at the core. And so what that fundamentally means is that everything across the business, everything from strategy to operations to the products and services that are being fielded really are really kind of revolving and supporting the data strategy. And for data to be used to drive strategic growth in the business, it can't just be in the hands of IT. You have to really democratize it across the entire business and empower really a range of stakeholders that includes the IT team all the way to the business analysts that are helping drive really kind of offensive strategic initiatives that are centered around data. Data empowerment really comes down to the idea of providing a platform, a coordinated platform, that enables stakeholders to maximize the business via their data. That makes great sense. So what are some of the obstacles that you're helping customers overcome when it comes to data empowerment challenges? Well, I think they really kind of come in a couple of large buckets. One of the first ones is really just helping customers understand where their data is and being able to identify it and provide really kind of a business vocabulary around their data. We also look at and support data operations. So we do embrace the IT stakeholder and the people that are responsible for building out the applications, architecting the data, implementing the data in their databases, managing the performance around the data, ensuring pipelines are operational and working effectively, looking at how data can be protected with business continuity in mind, disaster recovery, backup and recovery activities, data security. Lastly, in the data governance space, really being able to provide that robust view in management of data across the range of stakeholders that still maintains compliance postures for a company and ensures things like privacy are being maintained while business stakeholders are getting the data they need. Got it. So my last question. Why is Quest so uniquely positioned to help enterprises deliver on data empowerment initiatives? It's the breadth of our portfolio and the range of capabilities and the experience that we have in things related to data. And when we look at data intelligence as the foundation, we have those assets with the erwin data intelligence capability. When I look at data operations, we have those capabilities with things like the Toad portfolio or the Foglight portfolio or the SharePlex portfolio. When I look at data security and data protection, we have those capabilities with things like NetVault and our QoreStor line of products as well as bridging to our One Identity capabilities on the Identity and Access Management side. And then data governance, clearly. This is where we're in sweet spot. We can complement all those different areas. Heath, thank you so much for joining. Look forward to seeing Quest's data empowerment platform really help organizations empower everyone to bring the right data to every decision.